Dear Revere Community,
As we welcome our students and staff back to Revere Public Schools, we are excited for a new year ahead of learning and joy. Just last week, we welcomed over 100 new teachers and staff members. We can’t wait to see the success and new memories our students create this year.
Our teachers are shaping the lives of Revere students each and every day in schools across the city. We continue to negotiate a new teachers’ contract in good faith with the Revere Teachers Association (RTA). We value all of our Revere Public School educators and want nothing more than to reach an agreement and ensure our teachers are in front of students in every classroom in the district.
After months of negotiations, we continue to work with union representatives and are hopeful to finalize a collective bargaining agreement sooner rather than later. We have made several landmark contract proposals, including a historic increase in wages, the largest ever given in RPS history. The current average RPS teacher’s salary is $84,894 and would increase to $94,578 by June 2027. The most common salary among veteran RPS teachers is $104,822, and this would increase to over $117,655 by June 2027. Our most senior educators with advanced degrees, including a longevity increment, would be making $132,000 per year under our proposal to the RTA.
The RTA has cited reducing class sizes, creating safe working environments, and paid parental leave for birthing and non-birthing teachers as needs for our district. We believe it is important to share background on these issues with the community.
• Class size: RPS has over 7,000 students from prekindergarten through grade 12 with a student-teacher ratio of 12 to 1, which is lower than the state average of 13 students per teacher and lower than the national average of 15.5 students per teacher.
• Safe working environments: We could not disagree more with criticism regarding the safety and cleanliness of our school buildings. Over the years, RPS and the city have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in either building new schools or updating our older buildings. Out of the eight RPS buildings, four are new within the last 20 years. While upkeep and maintenance can sometimes be challenging at our older buildings, we have invested in new windows and air conditioning units at the Lincoln, new boilers and a new roof at the Garfield, new boilers as well as heating and cooling univents at the Beachmont, and updated furniture at all buildings to create a comfortable atmosphere for educating and learning. We maintain a full-service pest control contract, and our phenomenal custodial and maintenance staff does a wonderful job taking care of every complaint they receive in a timely manner. Any claims to the contrary are patently false.
?Last school year, we moved one step closer to building a new Revere High School. The Revere ?City Council approved a $493 million bond authorization for the new high school, approximately ?$238 million of which is bolstered by MSBA Grant funding.
?Unlike other districts, with the exception of Revere High School, our buildings are ‘new’ or ?‘modern.’ The Revere Public Schools do not mirror some other districts in the Commonwealth ?where students and teachers are teaching and learning in extremely dilapidated and outdated ?school buildings.
• Parental leave: This provision already exists in our teacher contract and covers all birthing and non-birthing employees. Currently, teachers can use accumulated sick time for parental leave. We have offered an additional five paid days for maternity or paternity leave—without disturbing the individual employees’ sick time.
As we continue negotiations, our focus will be on families and caregivers. We have settled or have tentative agreements with all four of our other unions that operate in our school and remain encouraged.
We are committed to keeping schools open and are already taking a proactive approach. We are confident that, in the event of an illegal strike, we can create a temporary program that keeps our schools open and minimizes the harm to students and their caregivers.
A strike in Revere and the closure of schools would cause enormous financial, emotional, and physical hardship. A closure would require a majority of our caregivers to make the painful decision to either leave their students home alone while they go to work or not go to work and lose pay. This could affect families’ ability to pay rent and buy groceries and other necessities.
This, above all, is why we are committed to keeping our schools open. We absolutely do not want a strike to occur. We remain steadfast in successfully concluding negotiations, signing a new teachers’ contract, and having a positive school year for students, families, and staff.
The Revere School Committee consists of Jacqueline Monterroso, John Kingston, Stacey Brondson-Rizzo, Aisha Milbury-Ellis, Anthony Caggiano, and Frederick Sannella.
